From this we see that Salimbene had sufficient mystic ardour to keep him a happy Franciscan. It made the otherworldly part of one who also was a merry gossip among his fellows. An inner power of spiritual enthusiasm and fantasy accompanied him through his life, giving him a double point of view: he looks at things as they are, with curiosity and interest, and ever and anon loses himself in transcendental dreams of Paradise and all at last made perfect.[636]
Although the father had devoted his son to a thousand devils, he did not cease from attempts, by persuasion and even violence, to draw him back into his own civic and martial world. So the young man got permission from the minister-general to go and live in Tuscany, where he might be beyond the reach of parental activities. “Thereupon I went and lived in Tuscany for eight years, two of them at Lucca, two at Siena, and four at Pisa.” He gained great comfort from converse and gossip of an edifying kind, as he fell in with those loving enthusiasts who had received their cloaks from the hand of the blessed Francis himself. At Siena he saw much of Brother Bernard of Quintavalle who had been the very first to receive the dress of the Order from the hand of its founder. Salimbene gladly listened to his recollections of Francis, who in this venerable disciple’s words might seem once more to walk the earth.
Yet Salimbene, still young in heart and years, could readily take up with the companionship of the ne’er-do-well vagabonds who frequently attached themselves, as lay brothers, to the Franciscan Order. He tells of a day’s outing with one of whose character he is outspoken but without personal repugnance:
“I was a young man when I dwelt at Pisa. One day I went out begging with a certain lay brother, a good-for-nothing. He was a Pisan, and the same who afterwards went and lived with the brothers at Fixulus, where they had to drag him out of a well which he had jumped into from some foolishness or desperation. Then he disappeared, and could not be found. The brothers thought the devil had carried him off. However that may have been, this day at Pisa he and I went with our baskets to beg bread, and chanced to enter a courtyard. Above, all about, hung a thick, leafy vine, its freshness lovely to see and its shade sweet for resting in. There were leopards there and other beasts from over the sea, at which we gazed long, transfixed with delight, as one will at the sight of the novel and beautiful. Girls were there also and boys at their sweetest age, handsome and lovely, and ten times as alluring for their beautiful clothes. The boys and girls held violas and cytharas and other musical instruments in their hands, on which they made sweet melodies, accompanied with gestures. There was no hub-bub, nor did any one talk; but all listened in silence. And the song which they chanted was so new and lovely in words and melody as to gladden the heart exceedingly. None spoke to us, nor did we say a word to any one. They did not stop singing and playing so long as we were there—and long indeed we lingered and could scarcely take ourselves away. God knows, I do not, who set this joyful entertainment; for we had never seen anything like it before nor could we ever find its like again.”
From the witchery of this cloud-dropped entertainment Salimbene was rudely roused as he went out upon the public way.
“A man met me, whom I did not know, and said he was from Parma. He seized upon me, and began to chide and revile: ‘Away scamp, away,’ he cried. ‘A crowd of servants in your father’s house have bread enough and meat; and you go from door to door begging bread from those without it, when you have enough to give to any number of beggars! You ought to be riding on a war-horse through Parma, and delighting people with your skill with the lance, so that there might be a sight for the ladies, and comfort for the players. Now your father is worn with grief and your mother from love of you, so she despairs of God.’”
Salimbene fended off this attack of carnal wisdom with many texts of Scripture. Yet the other’s words set him to thinking that perhaps it would be hard to lead a beggar’s life year after year until old age. And he lay awake that night, until God comforted him as before with a reassuring dream.
Pretty dreamer as he was, Salimbene can often tell a ribald tale. There was rivalry, as may be imagined, between the Dominicans (solemnes praedicatores) and the Minorites. The former seem occasionally to have concerted together so as to have knowledge of what their friends in other places were about. Then, when preaching, they would exhibit marvels of second sight, which on investigation proved true! A certain Brother John of Vicenza was a Dominican famed for preaching and miracles perhaps, and with such overtopping sense of himself that he went at least a little mad. Bologna was his tarrying-place. There a certain Florentine grammarian, Boncompagnus, tired of the foolery, made gibing rhymes about him and his admirers, and said he would do a miracle himself, and at a certain hour would fly with wings from the pinnacle of Sta. Maria in Monte. All came together at that hour to see. There he stood aloft, with his wings, ready, and the folk expectant, for a long time—and then he bade them disperse with God’s blessing, for it was enough for them to have seen him. They then knew that they had been fooled!
None the less the dementia of Brother John increased, so that one day at the Dominican convent in Bologna he fell in a rage because when his beard was cut the brothers did not preserve the hairs as relics. There came along a Minorite, Brother God-save-you, a Florentine like Boncompagnus, and like him a great buffoon and joker. To this convent he came, but refused all invitation to stay and eat unless a piece of the cloak of Brother John were given him, which was kept to hold relics. So they gave him a piece of the cloak, and after dinner he went off and befouled it, folded it up, and called for all to come and see the precious relics of the sainted John, which he had lost in the latrina. So they flocked to see, and were somewhat more than satisfied.[637]
No need to say that this Salimbene had a quick eye for beauty in both men and women; he is always speaking of so-and-so as a handsome man, and such and such a lady as “pulcherrima domina,” of pleasing ways and moderate stature, neither too tall nor too short. But one may win a more amusing side-light on the “eternal womanly” in his Chronicle, from the following: “Like other popes, Nicholas III. made cardinals of many of his relatives. He made a cardinal of one, Lord Latinus, of the Order of Preachers (which we note with a smile, and expect something funny). He appointed him legate to Lombardy and Tuscany and Romagnola.” Note the enactments of this cardinal-legate: